Road Trip #4 The End

Betty and Chip live in a small town with the university where he worked for his PhD program in Atmospheric Physics. Really. They have a house where they feed all the birds and watch about 80 turkey vultures fly overhead into the trees behind them at dusk. Some have even been named! They have three cats, a fish and they lost their bird last year. They have a good life together. The mobile home is taken out about every two weeks during the summer and their boat is used almost as often.

They were dealing with Betty's 99-year old mother finally being put into a care facility. Betty now has to clean out the house and prepare it for sale. It is about 45-minutes from us so we will see them in a couple weeks.

We sat on their front porch and talked. Suddenly, there were clouds. Rain? They hadn't had rain in 55 days. It started! We claimed we brought it with us! Suddenly, hail. Then, marble-size hail. We were a bit concerned about our car! Throughout, lightening was putting a show.


The food treat in their area was at the famous Buckhorn Tavern, which was featured on a Bobby Flay Throwdown for Green Chili Cheeseburgers. Yes, please. They are really the best but I needed Chip to eat my other half. It was so big!

Their little town had a central square, which featured a new memorial to the military and also a rather creepy one:

We bought a beautiful shoulder wrap made by the local Native Americans for mom and some pottery for ourselves. The next day, we enjoyed playing at two casinos. I lost $40.00 and Michael made $60.00 and that was after playing for hours! It was great just talking and hanging out with them for days. At our hotel, anti-bombing training was going on, according to their t-shirts. All the hotels were filled with people receiving this training and we even chatted with a great guy from Jamaica who was just stunned by the beauty of New Mexico.

Sadly, we said our goodbyes and drove through the mountains on Highway 60. We spotted antelope, deer and the VLA - Very Large Array. We found a fantastic restaurant for lunch before leaving New Mexico so Michael could order his Cheese Enchiladas with green chilies, once again. He also ordered sapodillas for dessert. With honey, of course.

Kingman. A good place to stop. We were still so full from lunch that we didn't leave the hotel room and tried to sleep. We had a nine-hour drive home the next day. It was a rather sad day. I could have been on the road so much longer.

Since being home on Thursday night, we have worked in the gardens for hours, drove to Sacramento area for Shelley's baby shower with mom, went through the mail, paid the bills, food shopped and so many other minor things. I still have to wash the sheets as British Don is coming for a week in six days. Let's just say that we are sleeping really well at night.